No. 2183

Roebuck, Leg Of, a la Francatelli

Cuissot de Chevreuil a la Francatelli

Have a leg of roebuck weighing about ten pounds; pare and lard it with lardons (No. 2, Fig. 52), and marinate for six hours in cold cooked marinade (No. 114); then roast in the oven, basting frequently with melted butter while cooking, this operation taking about an hour and a half to an hour and three-quarters; salt. Dress, garnish around with bouchees (No. 11) filled with chestnut puree (No. 712). Serve a venison sauce (No. 556) in a sauce-boat. Hand around currant jelly the same time as the meat.

← No. 2182 Venison—Slices of Kernel—in Papers Other Game No. 2184 Minced Venison →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

A large larded haunch of deer, marinated, roasted and served with chestnut-filled pastry cases and a peppery game sauce. The cross-references send you to four other numbered recipes in the book, which is worth knowing before you start.

The hinge: internal temperature, not the clockRanhofer gives an hour and a half to an hour and three-quarters for a ten-pound leg but no oven heat, and timings of that period assume a cook judging by eye. Venison is very lean and turns dry and livery past medium-rare, so roast to an internal 125-130F at the thickest part and rest it 20 minutes; in a modern 350F oven a bone-in leg that size will reach that mark in roughly 1 1/2 to 2 hours, but the thermometer decides.
RoebuckChevreuil is the European roe deer, a small animal whose whole hind leg rarely approaches ten pounds. A ten-pound leg points to a larger animal than a true roebuck, and the French name may well be doing menu duty here. Farmed red deer or fallow venison, or a bone-in leg from any reputable game dealer, is the practical substitute; wild-shot deer cannot legally be sold in the United States.
LardingLardons here are strips of firm pork back fat threaded through the meat with a larding needle to keep it moist. If you have neither needle nor back fat, bard the leg instead: cover the exposed surfaces with thin sheets of fatback or caul fat, or overlap unsmoked streaky bacon and tie it on, removing it for the last 20 minutes to let the meat colour.
The cooked marinade (No. 114)A marinade cuite is typically white wine and vinegar simmered with root vegetables, thyme, bay, garlic and peppercorns, then cooled completely before it touches the meat; the recipe's insistence on "cold" is the operative word. Pouring it on warm is the classic error: it starts to cook the surface and encourages spoilage. Six hours in the refrigerator is on the short side for a leg this size; overnight does no harm.
Basting with butterMelted butter browns and burns readily over a long roast. Clarified butter, or butter cut with a neutral oil, gives the same result without the scorched-milk-solid taste, and a foil tent over the shank end prevents it drying while the thick end comes up to temperature.
Bouchees and chestnut pureeBouchees (No. 11) are small round puff pastry cases with the centres lifted out. Ready-made frozen vol-au-vent shells stand in perfectly. A chestnut puree of this kind is cooked chestnuts sieved and loosened with stock and butter; vacuum-packed cooked chestnuts save an hour of peeling. Fill the cases just before serving or the pastry goes soft.
Venison sauce (No. 556)Ranhofer's game sauce is a poivrade line: a mirepoix browned in fat, deglazed with vinegar and wine, moistened with game stock and espagnole, simmered, strained and finished with crushed pepper and often a little currant jelly. Trimmings from the leg make the stock. The vinegar and the pepper are the point of it, and it should be sharp against the sweet chestnut and jelly.
YieldA ten-pound bone-in leg carves for 12 to 15 as a main course. This is a dish designed for a service table, not a family dinner, and it wants to go out on a heated platter.

A Little History

The name honours Charles Elme Francatelli, the Italian-English cook who trained under Careme, served as chief cook to Queen Victoria in the early 1840s and published The Modern Cook in 1846 before taking charge of the kitchen at the Reform Club in the 1850s. By the time Charles Ranhofer compiled The Epicurean in 1894 out of thirty-odd years at Delmonico's in New York, attaching a dish to Francatelli's name was shorthand for a particular kind of grand-hotel garnishing: larded game, a sharp poivrade-style sauce, a sweet fruit jelly passed separately and a ring of small pastry cases holding something soft and starchy. Chestnut and currant with venison is older than either man and belongs to the European hunting table, where the acid-and-sweet pairing was understood as the remedy for lean, strong-flavoured meat. What the entry really records is the American restaurant appetite of the Gilded Age for game served in full French dress, at a moment when wild venison still moved freely through city markets in a way it no longer can.